Israeli
peace activist: Jabari Killed Amid Talks on Long-term Truce
Gershon Baskin, who helped mediate between Israel and Hamas in
the deal to release Gilad Shalit, says Israel made a mistake
that will cost the lives of 'innocent people on both sides.'

By Nir Hasson

November 18, 2012 "Haaretz"
-- Hours before Hamas strongman Ahmed Jabari was
assassinated, he received the draft of a permanent truce
agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining
the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the
factions in the Gaza Strip. This, according to Israeli peace
activist Gershon Baskin, who helped mediate between Israel and
Hamas in the deal to release Gilad Shalit and has since then
maintained a relationship with Hamas leaders.

Baskin told Haaretz on Thursday that senior officials in Israel
knew about his contacts with Hamas and Egyptian intelligence
aimed at formulating the permanent truce, but nevertheless
approved the assassination.

“I think that they have made a strategic mistake," Baskin said,
an error "which will cost the lives of quite a number of
innocent people on both sides."

"This blood could have been spared. Those who made the decision
must be judged by the voters, but to my regret they will get
more votes because of this,” he added.

Baskin made Jabari’s acquaintance when he served as a mediator
between David Meidin, Israel’s representative to the Shalit
negotiations, and Jabari. “Jabari was the all-powerful man in
charge. He always received the messages via a third party, Razi
Hamad of Hamas, who called him Mister J.”

For months, Baskin sent daily messages in advance of the
formulation of the deal. He kept the channel of communication
with Gaza open even after the Shalit deal was completed.

According to Baskin, during the past two years Jabari
internalized the realization that the rounds of hostilities with
Israel were beneficial neither to Hamas nor to the inhabitants
of the Gaza Strip and only caused suffering, and several times
he acted to prevent firing by Hamas into Israel.

He said that even when Hamas was pulled into participating in
the launching of rockets, its rockets would always land in open
spaces. “And that was intentional,” clarified Baskin.

In recent months Baskin was continuously in touch with Hamas
officials and with Egyptian intelligence as well as with
officials in Israel, whose names he refused to divulge. A few
months ago Baskin showed Defense Minister Ehud Barak a draft of
the agreement and on the basis of that draft an inter-ministry
committee on the issue was established. The agreement was to
have constituted a basis for a permanent truce between Israel
and Hamas, which would prevent the repeated rounds of shooting.

“In Israel,” Baskin said, “they decided not to decide, and in
recent months I took the initiative to push it again.” In recent
weeks he renewed contact with Hamas and with Egypt and just this
week he was in Egypt and met with top people in the intelligence
system and with a Hamas representative. He says he formed the
impression that the pressure the Egyptians applied to the
Palestinians to stop shooting was serious and sincere.

“He was in line to die, not an angel and not a righteous man of
peace,” Baskin said of Jabari and of his feelings in the wake of
the killing, “but his assassination also killed the possibility
of achieving a truce and also the Egyptian mediators’ ability to
function. After the assassination I spoke to the people in
Israel angrily and they said to me: We’ve heard you and we are
calling to ask if you have heard anything form the Egyptians or
from Gaza.”

Since the assassination, Baskin has been in touch with the
Egyptians but not with the Palestinians. According to him, the
Egyptians are very cool-headed. They said it is necessary to let
the fresh blood calm down. "The Egyptian intelligence people are
doing what they are doing with the permission and authorization
of the regime and apparently they very much believe in this
work,” he says.

“I am mainly sad. This is sad for me. I am seeing people getting
killed and that is what is making me sad. I tell myself that
with every person who is killed we are engendering the next
generation of haters and terrorists,” adds Baskin.

Israel
broke an informal ceasefire on Wednesday by assassinating Hamas
military commander Ahmed Jabari in an air strike.

Democracy Now! - Broadcast - November 16, 2012

The
Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who helped mediate talks
between Israel and Hamas in the deal to release Israeli soldier
Gilad Shalit, has revealed Jabari was assassinated just hours
after he received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with
Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the ceasefire.
Baskin, the founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research
and Information, joins us from Jerusalem. We also speak with
Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer based in Gaza.

TRANSCRIPT

AMYGOODMAN:
I’m looking at a
piece by Max Fisher in the Washington Post that
talks about the killing of the 11-month-old son of
BBC journalist Jihad Misharawi. Not
only was his little baby killed, but this Israeli round hit
Misharawi’s four-room house, killing his sister-in-law, wounding
his brother. According to BBC Middle
East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who was with him in Gaza, he
said, "We’re all one team in Gaza." After spending a few hours
with his grieving colleague, Danahar wrote on Twitter,
"Questioned asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a
moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihad’s son
get killed."

I want to
turn, as well, to Gershon Baskin now, founder of the
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, the
initiator of the secret talks between Israel and Hamas for the
release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He is speaking to us
from Jerusalem.

Gershon,
can you talk about the assassination of Jabari, the military
head of Hamas, and the significance of this, as reported in
Ha’aretz, what Jabari received just before he was
assassinated?

GERSHONBASKIN:
Well, Jabari, as the leader of the military wing of Hamas, Izz
al-Din al-Qassam, was the person who was called on by the
Egyptians and by his own leaders to enforce previous ceasefire
understandings that were reached between Israel and Hamas after
each round of rocket fire emerged over the past years. With the
increasing intensity of the rocket fire and the shortening of
the periods of ceasefires between myself and my counterpart in
Hamas—we worked together on the Shalit prisoner exchange deal—Razi
Hamed, the deputy foreign minister, proposed to the parties that
they enter into a long-term ceasefire understanding with
mechanisms that define what are breaches and what are not
breaches and how to deal with emerging situations that are
defined by Israel as impending terrorist attacks. I had written
a draft about eight months ago. The draft was circulated around
to Israeli officials, Hamas officials, the Egyptian intelligence
and the United Nations. It was rejected, or it was decided by
Hamas and Israel at that time not to decide, not to make a
decision on it.

About
about a month ago, when the intensity of the fighting continued
again, Razi Hamed and I decided to give it another chance, and
we talked together and tried to make the proposal that I had
initially written a little bit less complex, easier to
understand or perhaps easier to implement, and it was also
designed as a trial period of between six—three to six months. I
met Razi Hamed last week in Cairo. We talked about it. He went
to begin showing it to the Hamas officials. He showed it to some
Hamas officials sitting in Cairo. They told him to go back to
Gaza and to show it to the military and political officials back
in Gaza, and he did that on Wednesday morning. He was showing it
around to Ahmed Jabari and other people. I was supposed to
receive from him that evening a copy of the draft that he had
written in Arabic for me to deliver to the Israeli side and to
the Egyptian intelligence, which I was not able to do in the
end.

AMYGOODMAN:
Because he was assassinated.

GERSHONBASKIN:
That’s right.

JUAN
GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gershon, I want
to read part of a recent
piece in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz about the
Israeli assassination of Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari.
The article by Aluf Benn is titled "Israel Killed Its
Subcontractor in Gaza." It begins, quote, "Ahmed Jabari was a
subcontractor, in charge of maintaining Israel’s security in
Gaza. This title will no doubt sound absurd to anyone who in the
past several hours has heard Jabari described as 'an
arch-terrorist,' [or] 'the terror chief of staff' or 'our Bin
Laden.'

“But that
was the reality for the past five and a half years. Israel
demanded of Hamas that it observe the truce in the south and
enforce it on the [multiplicity of] armed [organizations] in the
Gaza Strip. The man responsible for carrying out this policy was
Ahmed Jabari.

"In return
for enforcing the quiet, which was never perfect, Israel funded
the Hamas regime through the flow of [shekels] in armored trucks
to banks in Gaza, and continued to supply infrastructure and
medical services to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip."

Your
response to that article and placing Jabari in the context of
the security situation in Gaza over the past few years?

GERSHONBASKIN:
Well, I don’t want it to be misinterpreted. Ahmed Jabari was not
a man of peace. He was not an angel in any way. He was a
warrior. He was a fighter. He was the person responsible for the
Hamas coup d’état, which was conducted in June of 2007 when they
brutally executed some of the Palestinian Authority security
personnel. He was a strong military man who refused to speak to
Israelis directly. I never had direct contact with him; it was
always through third parties, other people in Hamas or other
people. He never talked about peace. The truce that we were
talking about was not a peace agreement. So it has to be clear:
Jabari was a deeply religious Muslim who believed in the cause
of Hamas and the ideology of Hamas, which includes the
destruction of Israel.

But Jabari
also saw, over the last year or two, a continuation of this
policy of having periodic fighting with Israel that left always,
in every round, between 10 and 30 Palestinians killed in Gaza, a
lot of destruction, and almost no one killed in Israel. The lack
of balance of power and force is so—is so obvious here that
Jabari came to the conclusion, along with others in Hamas, that
this was futile, a futile way to fight Israel, and they wanted a
time-out. During the time-out, it was obvious that they were
going to continue to build their forces, continue to smuggle in
weapons through the tunnels and other ways to build up their
rocket potential, longer-range rockets, anti-aircraft missiles.
So this was Jabari’s thinking.

Now, my
perspective on this was that Israel had to secure quiet. It is
unacceptable for the civilian population in the south of Israel
to be constantly under the threat of rocket fire from Gaza.
There are several ways to achieve that quiet. One is to do what
Israel is doing now: to assassinate people, to put
two-and-a-half million people in—1.6 million people in Gaza
under rocket fire, to put another million people in Israel under
rocket fire. To kill a lot of people, to do a lot of damage, in
the end will create some kind of deterrence and have quiet for a
period of time. Or we could try what we’ve never tried before,
and that’s engagement, dialogue and trying to reach some
longer-term understandings. I don’t know if it would have
worked. Honestly, I don’t know if Jabari would have held to the
terms of the agreements or if the other factions would have
given into that. My point was: Let’s try it. We’ve never done it
before. Let’s try it. Maybe will have a dynamic of its own,
which, instead of leading to more escalation, will actually
bring about de-escalation and a possibility of having a new kind
of relationship with Gaza.

AMYGOODMAN:
Gershon Baskin and Mohammed Omer, I want to ask you both, the
response where you each are, respectively, to these attacks
right now, Gershon Baskin in Jerusalem and Mohammed Omer on his
way to Khan Younis.

GERSHONBASKIN:Tafaddal, Mohammed.

MOHAMMEDOMER:
Yeah, shukran. Well, there is also more of this attack,
just to bring more breaking news. The Israeli air strike just
targeted a motorcycle in the west of Gaza City at the moment, as
we speak. And ambulances are on their way to evacuate the people
who were targeted. There is another new Israeli F-16 missile. We
don’t know if it’s F-16 missile or if it’s the armed drones
which fired a new round of missiles on the northern part of the
Gaza Strip.

Let me
just mention something about—back to the humanitarian situation.
Today, the Egyptian prime minister made a visit to the Gaza
Strip, Hisham Kandil, and he was able to see the destruction and
the damage caused to the Palestinian population. And he was at
Shifa Hospital holding one of the babies who was injured. And we
could see that the prime minister, his T-shirt had a lot of
blood on his—from this child who was injured, who actually died
in the hands of the Egyptian prime minister today as he was
speaking to the media.

Other
thing that I would like to mention here about the crossings in
the Gaza Strip, the Rafah Crossing is open today. Kerem Shalom
is closed. Erez Crossing was open in the morning; now it’s
closed even for humanitarian cases. According to the United
Nations and according to my observation and counting, there is
12 houses that were completely demolished in the last three
days. About 150 houses, including mosques, roads, schools and
farmlands, are being targeted—even kindergarten for children.
Begs the question: Where the Gazans are going to hide when the
Israeli F-16s are firing missiles day and night?

AMYGOODMAN:
And Gershon Baskin?

GERSHONBASKIN:
Yeah, I think, Amy, I mean, it’s the same situation in Israel. I
have an iPhone application here which is called Seva Adom, Red
Color, the Color Red, which warns people when a missile is being
fired into Israel. I’m getting these now almost every other
minute. It’s very good for geography lessons, because I’m
learning the name of every town in the south of Israel—not only
in the south, it’s a wider region now, as well. And here we have
the civilian population under fire; it’s not targeted at all at
military targets. It’s fired at the civilian population in
Israel, and the Israelis are angry.

The
Israelis don’t know why they’re being targeted from Gaza. From
the Israel point of view, the Israeli point of view, the Israeli
understanding of the situation, Israel left Gaza in 2005 and
stopped the occupation of Gaza, from their perspective, without
having a single settlement left there or single military
personnel on the land of Gaza. And the civilian population has
been targeted by thousands and thousands of rockets since the
beginning of this operation. Since the assassination of Jabari,
there’s been more than 500 rockets sent entirely on the civilian
population. Not one of the targets is a military target.

JUAN
GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gershon Baskin,
I’d like to ask you, four years ago, after the presidential
election and before President Obama was inaugurated, the Israeli
government launched an invasion of Gaza and actually pulled the
troops back just before President Obama was inaugurated. Now,
once again, after a presidential election, the Israeli
government has begun taking actions in—against the population in
Gaza. But the difference now is the situation has changed
dramatically in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. Do you—what
do you—what is your sense of the Egyptian government’s—the test
that this poses to the Egyptian government in its relationship
both to Israel and to the Palestinians?

GERSHONBASKIN:
Well, I think we’re seeing, by the nature of the operation that
Israel is conducting now, as opposed to Cast Lead four years
ago, is that Israel is taking a lot more care for the—what’s
called, the horrible term, "collateral damage" to be a lot less.
If there’s been, according to Mohammed, 500 sorties so far over
Gaza, and there are 23, maybe 24, of the people that he
mentioned killed in Gaza, that’s significantly, significantly
less than was in Cast Lead. My understanding is—and I haven’t
seen the list of names of all those people killed, but I
understand that most of them are combatants.

I don’t
want anyone to be killed, and I think that this whole operation
could have been avoided. But the reality is that Israel is
considering its relations with Egypt as one of its primary
concerns. The Egyptian military intelligence has played a
crucial role in the last years mitigating and negotiating
between Israel and Hamas, including with the release of Gilad
Shalit and including in the last ceasefires. I was sitting in
Cairo with a senior intelligence officer on Sunday evening when
he received a phone call from the head of Islamic Jihad in Gaza,
informing him that they had agreed to enter into the ceasefire.
This was immediately communicated to the Israeli side by the
military intelligence in Egypt. So, the relationship with Egypt
is Israel’s most important strategic asset. And another war, a
full-fledged war in Gaza, with horrendous damage, would
certainly jeopardize the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

AMYGOODMAN:
We just have 10 seconds left, Mohammed Omer. Are you still—

MOHAMMEDOMER:
The majority of the people who were actually targeted are
civilians. We’re talking about two women among the 23 who were
killed—two women, six children and two elderly people. As I
speak right now, there are more people, and ambulances are
arriving to the Khan Younis hospital with more casualties who
are civilians. The target is here civilians. Because the
military leaders are hiding under the ground, Israel finds
nothing else but to attack civilian population in the Gaza
Strip.

AMYGOODMAN:
Mohammed Omer and Gershon Baskin, I thank you both for being
with us. Gershon Baskin, founder of the Israel/Palestine Center
for Research and Information, initiator of the secret talks
between Israel and Hamas for the release of the Israeli soldier
Gilad Shalit. And thank you to Mohammed Omer, Palestinian
journalist based in Gaza, speaking to us from Khan Younis. In
2008, he won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

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